Missorts, 2012. Photo © 2012 Max McClure, courtesy Situations
Synopsis
Missorts is a new public art project for Bristol conceived by the writer and novelist Tony White and commissioned by Situations for Bristol City Council. Missorts will be developed through short story workshops inspired by Bristol’s radical literary heritage and reflecting the past and present of the Portwall and Redcliffe areas of the city.
Missorts takes account of the transient nature of the area and the diversity of writings, objects and architectures that are found there. The project will contribute its own set of new ideas to the site: a series of short stories which will be published as part of a street-level mobile app and interventions edited by Tony White for Redcliffe Way. The project will launch in November 2012.
The title Missorts comes from the process by which the post office reunites lost or incorrectly addressed items of post with their intended recipients. It is how things that were lost are found again.
Tony White
Tony White is best known for his novel Foxy-T, published by Faber and Faber, which has been called, ‘one of the best London novels you’ll ever get to read.’ Tony’s latest book is Dicky Star and the garden rule (Forma), a specially commissioned novella published to accompany a series of works by the artists Jane and Louise Wilson reflecting upon the Chernobyl disaster. Other works include Charlieunclenorfolktango (Codex), the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans (Cadogan), and numerous short stories published in journals, collections, exhibition catalogues and a variety of special editions. He co-edited the fiction anthology Croatian Nights (Serpent’s Tail) and edited the Brit-pulp collection (Sceptre). He has been writer in residence at the Science Museum, London, and Leverhulme Trust writer in residence at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Tony White has given hundreds of readings from his novels and short stories in the UK and internationally at venues ranging from the National Portrait Gallery, London to the Glastonbury festival. Tony White collaborated with Blast Theory to write Ivy4evr, an SMS-based, interactive drama for young people broadcast by Channel 4 in October 2010 and nominated for a BIMA award in 2011 by the British Interactive Media Association. Tony has edited and published the artists’ book imprint Piece of Paper Press since 1994 and is currently chair of London’s award-winning arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm.
Situations is an art commissioning and research programme which operates from a University base, but produces artworks, events and publications outside the academic context. The programme was initiated in October 2003 by Claire Doherty, who is Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at the University of the West of England, Bristol. From the start, the programme’s guiding principles were to combine the ambition of a commissioning agency model with the critical rigiour of an academic research centre. We believe that artists have the capacity to bring something we might never have imagined to a particular place and we are committed to realising those dreams. Curating is far more than project management to us. It is a creative, critical and often passionate undertaking where we seek to understand the best possible means through which to support an artist to make an outstanding work of art in response to a specific situation.
